The Program in Interdisciplinary Education Research (PIER) at Carnegie Mellon, initially funded by IES in 2004, is designed to train scientists whose rigorous research on learning conditions related to curriculum, instruction, and assessment will improve academic outcomes for diverse Pre-K through post-secondary students. PIER fellows earn an Education Sciences Certificate by fulfilling a set of course and project requirements and conducting a dissertation involving applied research in education, while simultaneously earning a PhD in one of Carnegie Mellon's participating departments (Human Computer Interaction, Economics, Machine Learning, Philosophy, Psychology, Robotics, and Statistics). The Program in Interdisciplinary Education Research training focuses on skills relevant to IES's development and efficacy goals in the areas of Cognition and Student Learning, Math and Science Education, and Educational Technology. Training emphasizes the use of cognitive modeling, process-tracing tools, and advanced statistical techniques for analyzing complex data sets with an emphasis on causal modeling.

Project Website: http://www.cmu.edu/pier/.

Related IES Projects: This university previously received an award to implement its Program in Interdisciplinary Education Research (PIER). More information about this earlier award can be found at: http://ies.ed.gov/ncer/projects/grant.asp?ProgID=16&grantid=148&InvID=11.